Correctly predicting what’s going to be in the Budget is akin to completing the football pools or picking the lottery numbers, given the variables and levers that a Chancellor has to pull at any one time.
There was much focus on the Supreme Court last week, where judges upheld a ruling that MPs must be given a vote on Britain leaving the European Union. The result was that parliament remains sovereign.
In the last fortnight, two very different party conferences have occurred; Labour’s in Liverpool and the Conservative’s in Birmingham. For the most part, Conservative attendees – finding themselves in a majority government, with an exit from the EU in the offing and a Prime Minister channelling a bit of their heroine, Mrs Thatcher – were by far the happier.
Search for Brexit on Google and you can expect 165,000,000 (and counting) hits in just 0.33 seconds which is some achievement for a term that was first coined in June 2012, according to the online MacMillan Dictionary…
The referendum result is not legally-binding. Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty is the instrument which exists in law to allow for countries to leave the EU. But until it is invoked – until a prime minster presses the “red button” – Britain’s relationship with the bloc remains the same. Once it is pressed, the…
In the brouhaha about Brexit (and of course Bremain), one option has been completely missed: Britain ignores Europe and joins with the US, either partially or in a full fiscal, monetary and legislative union. For those of us considering voting to stay in the EU, it could be argued that all of the reasons to…
The impending EU referendum, and the possibility of a Brexit, have dominated the news for what feels like months, despite indications that many people are fed up with it. Recent polling and focus groups suggest that the increasingly impenetrable soup of horror stories, utopian promises and questionable statistics, which has characterised the campaign, is a…
Pomp and ceremony outweighed legislative substance even more than usual in this year’s speech, which was deliberately light on new policies because of the upcoming EU referendum. However, underneath all the wigs and pageantry there was a subtle message from the government: let us finish the job. Many of the announcements made today depend on…
There are differing views as to whether the people of America got the ‘change’ they voted for when President Obama won the first of his two terms of office. The fact that he beat Hillary Clinton, who at the time was the shoe-in candidate to the Democrat candidacy, was not predicted. With Donald Trump now…